Boost your Business with Social Media

Social media expert, Louise Thomas, reveals how social media can work for you

Over the past few years you’ll most probably will have heard countless experts harping on about the importance of social media for your business, and that it's an absolute necessity for any company in the 21^st Century – and to be honest, they're not wrong!

With 72% of internet users now admitting to being active on some form of social media, there's a vast market out there with huge potential for your business to tap into. 

However, as it's such a new form of marketing, many business owners still feel a little unsure about how to best approach social media. Having personally worked with CEOs of businesses of all sizes on their marketing, I’ve encountered lots of popular queries and questions ranging from 'How much time should I be spending on social media marketing', to, 'Which social network will work best for my business?' and some quite frankly ask 'What is the point?!' To which I would simply inform them that Facebook alone has 1.15 billion users. Which other form of marketing available has the potential to reach anywhere near that number of consumers? 

New world

If you're unfamiliar with the big brave new world of social media, then where should you even start? What exactly is the best way to use social media for your business?

As with any marketing, you need to consider your consumer first and foremost and how they spend their time online. To break it down simply; Facebook has moved on from it's original popularity with students and is now surprisingly most popular with users between the ages of 25-35, a statistic which is increasing in age as time goes on. 

Teenagers have moved on to the next big thing in social media marketing, Instagram. Whilst this platform may now be four years old – which could be considered a respectable age in the world of all things online – the concept of using it for marketing is about to really take off in a whole new direction, because the platform have just announced the follow-through of paid advertising for the app, allowing brands to pay to promote their posts. 

Youtube is currently also big news in the world of social media, with over 1 billion unique users every single month and a community that keeps on growing, it seems foolish to overlook the power of using videos for online marketing. Where the saying goes, ‘a photo speaks a thousand words’, it could be more relevant to add that a Youtube video speaks a million. 

The final big player in terms of online social media is Twitter. Originating as a platform whereby users were given solely 140 characters to speak their mind, it has since evolved encouraging users to share images and now even animated GIFs. Twitter is most popular with certain areas of business, such as fashion, beauty, food, and is also used by many as a form of keeping up-to-date on the latest breaking news, its users vary in age. 

Blog it

Another great option of course, is a blog. These can be created on Blogspot, Tumblr or Wordpress and are a great tool in bringing people to your website. If you're constantly posting interesting and informative content, then you're quite likely to see regular readers coming back for more, which is great for business.

Other areas worth mentioning are Pinterest, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Vine and Tumblr – these are all great add-on platforms to use, which can really increase your online presence if you have the time.

Time is key when it comes to social media, first and foremost, you need to have adequate time to dedicate to looking after your online marketing, but it can also take time to start seeing any positive results. Your aim should be to build an online community almost, full of fans and potential customers of your brand/business, but just like any real life community, this sort of relationship takes some time to build, so don't give up too soon – be patient and you'll soon start to see how social media can really benefit your business.

If you're a little short on time then it could be worth thinking about who exactly is going to manage your social media. If you're the CEO of a business, then chances are social media isn't exactly going to be top of your priorities list! In which case it's important to decide who you want to manage it for you. A lot of businesses consider it an easy task, which can be delegated to an intern or work experience student, to which I'd recommend you to err on the side of caution. 

You may view Facebook and Twitter as a young persons game and assume that every young person knows how to work their way around a Facebook post – which is somewhat true – however, what they might not have the knowledge of is your company’s best practice, tone of voice, advertising approach, values or how marketing works in general. 

Trained Staff

A marketing trained individual is the natural choice of employee to take care of your online presence, and most definitely a wise one. However, it could also be worth considering a PA, or anyone in your organisation who is good with words. A smooth and successful social media schedule needs both well-written content with a dash of creativity and high levels or organisation.

The third option, however, would be to consider passing on this responsibility to a third party, a creative or digital agency who offer marketing services.

Top tips to takeaway!

1. Don't focus all your energy trying to please everyone, it's all about quality over quantity. Decide where your consumers spend most of their time socially online – if you're really stuck, ask them – and create regular posts on that site. It's better to have one really strong online presence, rather than five quiet ones.

2. Create interesting content. I think it's key to remember that people want to gain something from the time they spend online, so in order to create successful content you need to entertain them or inform them. 

3. Don't have as many followers as you'd like yet? Whatever you do, never 'buy' followers. Yes, this is as ridiculous as it sounds – you're quite literally paying money to add numbers to your accounts. This money would be better spent paying to boost your posts – Facebook, Twitter and now Instagram have a paid ads feature, whereby you can spend as little or as much money as you like on getting your posts to reach a larger audience. The great thing about this, is YOU get to choose who you want to reach – you can specify this by location, interests, age and gender. 

4. If all else fails, run a competition! This is great if you're starting out on social media, if your business can afford to give something away – whether it be a prize or service relative to your business, or even something generic like a gift voucher – this will bring in a lot of traffic to your pages. Ensure that your users have to 'like' and 'share' your page to enter, and before you know it you'll see an influx of activity. You'll then be able to reach out to all these people again in the future when advertising your business.